


Fire and Earth

by Periphyton



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Firebender cuddles ride or die, Found Family, Gen, Mostly Zuko POV, Pre-Zukka but that’s not part of this conversation, Takes place before Boiling Rock episode, They're friends no shipping, Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Toph calls Aang Twinkletoes, Toph doesn't want pity or guilt, Toph has a body count and she knows it, Toph's earthbending senses, Zuko exposition dump, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, after the Firebending Masters, ten pages of straight dialogue and they never mention Zuko's scar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26573029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Periphyton/pseuds/Periphyton
Summary: Zuko and Toph have a heart to heart talk about how careful they both have to be with their bending not to hurt people by accident, why Toph calls Aang 'Twinkletoes' and how her earthbending senses work, why they both had to escape their parents, and finding friends for the first time.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 218





	Fire and Earth

**Author's Note:**

> The found family/ chosen sibling dynamic between Zuko and Toph is one of my favorite fandom tropes in ATLA. The prompt for this story was the two of them comparing how careful they have to be with their bending, and a shared understanding of how easy it is for them to hurt people without intending to. I thought it was interesting how easy it was for Toph to forgive Zuko for burning her feet, and that she might have some personal experience with a comparable freak out reaction to put his panicked firebending in context. 
> 
> Then their dialogue just kept expanding, because they have a lot to talk about, and they both need a hug from each other. This was supposed to be a short prompt. It isn't anymore.

“Good work with Twinkletoes today. I think he’s finally starting to get it.” Toph said and sat down next to Zuko. He was meditating in a broken room with one wall and half the ceiling open to the sky, letting the late afternoon sunlight sink into his skin and renew his chi. 

“Why do you call him that?” Zuko asked her. 

“Call who what?”

“The Avatar. I mean Aang. Why do you call him ‘twinkletoes?” 

“Because he’s an airbender. Even when he’s standing on the ground he doesn’t really feel like he’s connected with the earth. He just floats above it, like he’s up in the sky all the time.” Toph waved her hand back and forth. 

“Oh. I see.” Zuko wasn’t really sure what she meant, but he didn’t want to bother her with a stupid question.

“No you don’t,” she replied immediately. 

“Sorry. Wait, how could you tell?” He looked down at her, even more confused than before. Toph was the friendliest person to him in the group - probably the friendliest person to him in the entire world at this point, to be honest. He didn’t want to risk upsetting her.

“Did Aang ever explain to you how I see with earthbending?” she asked.

“He said that you were blind, and you can feel where things are with earth bending,” Zuko said. “It didn’t make much sense, but I know you’re a really powerful earthbender, and you get around pretty well even though you can’t see where you’re going.”

She just snorted. “I can see where I’m going, if I’m on the ground. I see with earthbending. Everything that touches the ground sends vibrations through it, and I can feel them with my feet. Every step I take sends vibrations out into the earth and I can feel where they go and what they touch. When we came to this temple, I could feel it under the cliffs before anybody else could see it. I feel the vibrations of everybody walking around, their footsteps and heartbeats. When people lie their heartbeats change, and I feel it. I can always tell when people lie. Calm down, Sparky, I’m not saying that to threaten you.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Zuko was trying not to be scared but this was creepy. He already had valid reasons to fear Azula and Katara, so he supposed knowing another girl younger than him with superior bending powers couldn’t make his life much more dangerous than it already was. 

“You didn’t have to - I felt your heart jump. Relax. If I know when you’re lying, I also know when you’re telling the truth. Like when you showed up with ‘Hello, Zuko here’ I could tell you meant it. I knew you weren’t lying to us or trying to be sneaky.” She patted his leg. “I know I can trust you because I know you tell the truth.” 

That might have been even creepier. But it was also immensely reassuring to know that at least someone believed him, and he didn’t have to keep trying to convince her because she already knew the truth. There was no point with trying to keep up any pretense with Toph. “Thanks,” he said softly. “That means a lot to me.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, and then punched him in the arm.

“Ouch!”

“That means I like you.” 

“I’m glad someone does.”

Toph laughed. “Aang likes you, he's just not sure how to deal with it yet. Sokka will like you soon enough. Ask him about his space sword and do some boy stuff like a friendly round of beating the crap out of each other with sharp pointy things, that’ll do it.” She smacked her fist into her other hand with a wicked grin. 

“You think so?”

“I know so. And if you brought any fireflakes with you, he’ll be your friend forever.”

“I didn’t, sorry.”

“That’s ok, he can’t eat them anyway. That doesn’t stop him from trying though.” She laughed again, and Zuko smiled. It was easy to smile with Toph. She was like having an incredibly overpowered little sister who wasn’t sadistically manipulative and cruel, and that he only had to be a little bit afraid of. It was nice. 

“Anyway, even when Aang bothers to walk on the ground he still feels like the wind blowing over it instead of someone standing on it.” Toph said, continuing their earlier discussion. “When I was little one of my nurses tried to tell me about stars. She said they twinkled high up in the sky as little points of light, but to me it sounded like little grains of sand that can be blown across the ground by the wind. Aang reminded me of that because when he walks it’s like only the tips of his toes touch the ground and the rest of him is in the air, like sand blowing in the wind.”

“That's pretty accurate,” Zuko said. He had wondered why a blind girl would use a description for what stars looked like to describe Aang, but the way she explained how she understood the world through her earthbending fit the little airbender surprisingly well.

“Really?” Toph sounded pleased that he understood her. 

“I’ve fought against him, remember? We used to be enemies. It was like trying to hit a hummbird-bee. By the time you’ve finished your punch it’s already spun around behind you. He’s always moving around, it’s like trying to punch out the wind,” he said. He would never forget the first fight they had, in his bedroom, trying to hit a kid smaller than him who kept ducking behind his back until he got floored with his own mattress. At least none of the crew had been around to witness how humiliating that had been. 

Toph laughed, loud and obnoxious. “That sounds like him alright. I almost had to break his glider staff to get him to learn to stand his ground when I started teaching him earth bending.”

Zuko winced. He knew if he tried to do that, Katara would kill him. After growing up with Azula he knew what an unambiguous death threat looked like when it stared him right in the eyes. “So what do other types of benders feel like when they walk? And non-benders?” he asked, genuinely interested in such a different form of perception. Toph grinned and had a happy wiggle at his interest in her abilities. 

“I know you’re a fire bender because the energy from your footsteps feels like hot sparks when it moves through the earth,” she said. “Katara feels like water running over stone, and Sokka walks like he’s walking on ice all the time, even when he’s not. I guess that’s because he grew up walking on ice at the South Pole.”

“Yeah, probably,” Zuko agreed with her, and tried not to think too hard about how Sokka walked. She couldn’t see him blush but he knew his heart would skip a beat if he thought about that for too long.

“Earthbenders walk like they’re part of the ground instead of moving on top of it. Even Earth non-benders walk on the ground like it’s part of them and they belong on it.” Toph slapped the stone floor of the temple, like it belonged to her. In a way, it did. Not the Air Nomad temple, but the raw rock it was shaped from. 

“What about Fire Nation non-benders?” he asked, curious about his own people.

“Eh, they walk like people. The other Water Tribe warriors also walked like they were on ice. Or like they had been on boats for a long time. It changes their balance, you know?” 

“Yeah, I know,” Zuko said. It had not been fun relearning his balance and depth perception on a ship at sea.

“I know people think helpless because I’m blind, but I’m only blind with my eyes. I can see the whole world with my feet, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!” she thrust her bare feet out in front of her and wiggled her toes proudly.

Zuko leaned back against the stone wall and thought about the younger girl by his side. She was so completely confident in herself and her extraordinary bending abilities but without any of Azula’s cruelty. She experienced the world so differently than he could have ever imagined, and more clearly than most people with two functional eyes. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the world as she described it, feeling where everything is and knowing how people walk just through vibrations he felt on his bare feet . . .

“Zuko? Zuko what’s wrong?” Toph sounded alarmed, her voice rising with worry.

“I burned your feet!” Zuko was suddenly frantic, his heart beating with panic. “I _burned your feet!_ You could have been left blind in your feet too!” 

“Zuko stop it! I’m fine! Calm down it doesn’t matter anymore.” Toph said. 

“Toph I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize - I should have been more careful - I almost - I’m sorry, I- owww!”

“I said stop it!” Toph yelled at him and punched his shoulder. Hard. Not bone breaking hard, not battle hard or earth bending hard, but still hard enough be clear she wasn’t playing around or joking. Hard enough he would be feeling that bruise for a week. At least. 

“What was that for?” he yelled back, and jumped up and away from her, clutching his shoulder.

“Because I don’t need your guilt any more than I need your pity! They’re both poison and I don’t want them!” 

“But I burned you! I - ” Zuko didn’t get any farther because Toph stomped her foot. The ground shifted underneath him, and he fell down on his hands and knees.

“Shut up! I told you I don’t want you to apologize or feel sorry for me! Or feel sorry for yourself.” She stomped her foot again, causing the ground to shake under Zuko to remind him of her power. 

“Then what do you want?” he said, and pushed himself back up. He should have known better than to try and beg for forgiveness; it had never worked for him in the past. 

“I want you to respect that I made my own choice to talk to a scared and jumpy firebender in the middle of the night, all by myself. I’m the one who decided to risk it - I make my own choices and I’ll take the consequences. I carry my own weight,” Toph said, crossing her arms and scowling at him. 

“I’m not scared!” 

“Yes you are. You’re scared all the time, Zuko. People who just see you with their eyes might think you don’t look scared, but I see with my feet. Your heart is always beating like you’re scared, you’re always getting ready to be attacked no matter who comes close to you.” She sat back down next to him. “You know I’m not lying. You can’t lie to me and you can’t lie to yourself.”

Zuko took a breath, then let it out before saying something stupid. Toph was wrong about one thing, he had lied to himself for years. About more things that he wanted to think about. 

“And besides, you _were_ being careful,” Toph continued. “If I had been anybody else, the most you would have done is singe my shoes. You didn’t blast fire at my face which could have burned and blinded a sighted person. Throwing fire at the ground was just a warning, not a real attack. For all you knew, I could have been Combustion Man.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Zuko said. It was the most charitable interpretation of what he had done, and he didn’t really want to argue with her about it. 

“I am right. And I know how careful you have to be with bending. It’s really easy to make a mistake and kill someone without even knowing it,” she said.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you! I’m not trying to kill anybody!” Zuko exclaimed, still frustrated about being misunderstood. 

“I know you weren’t. But I’m an earthbender. Do you have any idea how easy it is for me to hit someone so hard they break a lot of bones? And then die later from bleeding on the inside, and I would never even know about it?” Toph gestured with her hands for extra emphasis.

Zuko caught his breath and shivered. He had fought earthbenders while traveling through the backwater regions of the Earth Kingdom, and seen what the Dai Li could do in Ba Sing Se. One of the crew from his old ship couldn’t walk on land without going into battle shock from memories of fighting earthbenders, who turned the very ground they walked on into a killing weapon. If the Fire Nation had burned its legacy onto it’s victims skin, the Earth Kingdom left broken bones and broken bodies in its wake.

“Are you sure?” Zuko asked. “Maybe you didn’t hit them that hard.” He really didn’t want to think of this little girl as a killer. 

“I’m sure. I know how hard I was hitting the Dai Li when we were fighting them in Ba Sing Se. I couldn’t hold back. I know I killed some of them. I just don’t know which ones, or how long it took them to die.” She shuddered. “I didn’t want to kill them, but I had to fight to protect my friends. I like fighting, but not killing people. Even bad people.”

Zuko put his arms around her shoulders. Spirits, why should a twelve year old girl be thinking about this? Even Azula hadn’t killed people when she was this age. Probably. He hoped she hadn’t. “Toph, they were adults. Like you said, they knew what they were doing and made their own choices,” he said. He had also made his own choices that day, and had had to live with the consequences. 

Toph sighed and leaned against him. “I know. I’m just saying, I know how important it is to have control when you can hurt or kill people by accident. Even when you don’t want to. I don’t think Katara or Aang have to be careful like we do.” 

“I think Aang does, as the Avatar,” Zuko said.

“He does when he’s the Avatar, but not as Aang. He really believes in not hurting or killing people, even bad people. And I don’t think he can do as much damage by accident with airbending as we can do with firebending and earthbending. I don’t think Katara can either.”

Zuko nodded. He knew just how devoted the young monk was to his pacifist ideals, after all Aang had saved his life twice while they had been enemies. Perhaps after a hundred years of war the world needed a pacifist more than a great warrior. He also had a very healthy respect for Katara’s waterbending, but he didn’t think there was a waterbending equivalent to ‘wake up from a nightmare with fire in your hands and throw it out randomly while still half asleep without looking at where it’s going.’ 

“Toph, what were you going to talk to me about, when you came to see me?” Zuko asked her. It was time to change the subject away from accidentally killing people with out of control bending. 

“It doesn't really matter now.”

“Ok.”

“I wanted to know why you changed your mind from fighting Aang to helping him. I wanted to hear your side of the story,” she said. “I already knew what the rest of the group had to say about you. I know you meant it when you were fighting with your crazy sister against us. And I also know you really meant it when you walked up with ‘Hello, Zuko here.’ “ She mimicked his attempt to wave at his hopefully soon to be former enemies and giggled. 

“Do you still want to know?” he asked, and pretended that hadn’t been one of the most embarrassing moments in his life.

“Only if you can tell me without feeling guilty or sorry for yourself. And remember I’ll know if you lie to me.” She poked his side. 

“Ok,” Zuko said. It was a fair question, and at one point he even practiced his answer in case they asked him. Now all of his carefully thought out lines were a complete muddle in his head. Then again, considering how hard he had practiced reciting his offer to teach the Avatar fire bending to a badger frog, compared to how well it came out, maybe it was just as well he never got the chance to explain himself any further. 

“I was banished from the Fire Nation over three years ago,” he explained. “And I couldn’t go back home until I captured the Avatar, but he’d already been dead for almost a hundred years. I was supposed to fail so I could never return home, but then he actually came back and I had to try even harder to catch him before someone else did. Last winter after everything went wrong at the North Pole - well wrong for us, not for them - I went from being banished to being a fugitive. Uncle and I went to Ba Sing Se as refugees. For real, we really were refugees _and_ fugitives from the Fire Nation. I had to use a fake passport and pretend my name was Lee. My uncle got us passports in a game of Pai Sho with some old guy he knew at some weird flower shop by the Si Wong desert and there were bounty hunters after us. Then we got a job working in a tea shop in the lower ring. I had to wear an apron and serve tea to customers and we never got paid enough. I just wanted to go home, but It wasn’t until I was finally back home that I realized how much I had changed. 

“I thought I finally had everything I wanted, I was welcomed back as the crowned prince, and Azula even told Father that I was the one who killed the Avatar so I could get my honor back. But I think she was just lying so that I’d get the blame in case he wasn’t really dead. Which maybe isn't the best reason to send an assassin after somebody. Anyway, I thought everything would make sense once I was home but instead I was just more confused. It was like the opposite of being in Ba Sing Se - the Dai Li could say that there was no war in Ba Sing Se but everybody knew it was happening, even if nobody talked about it. But back at the Fire Nation, everybody talked about winning the war and defeating the Earth Kingdom - but it never felt real because nobody cared about what that really meant. 

“All those generals and advisors for the War Council, nobody even cared what it was doing to our own soldiers - not like they ever did before - before - but it still should have mattered! And when they talked about their war plans, all they could see were maps. Not people who just wanted a nice cup of tea and didn’t want their children or brothers or fathers to get killed from the fighting. Not even in their own people! And it was wrong. It has always been wrong, I was just to stupid to see it before.” 

Zuko stopped, his hands clenched into fists, and gritted his teeth to keep from breathing sparks. But Toph was still sitting at his side, and she was still listening. He didn’t want to think about his heartbeat felt like to her through the carved rock they were sitting on. 

“Wow,” she finally said, when it was clear he was done. “That was so incoherent you couldn’t possibly be lying. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks,” Zuko said dryly, and let his breath out in a sigh. “Anyway, on the day of the eclipse I finally told my father what I really think of him, he let me know what he thought of me, I got out alive, and I followed you guys here. I just hoped that even after everything I had done to them that they would still have to accept me, at least to teach Aang, because there was no other option. I never - well I tried not to, it would have been stupid to think that we could be-” he stopped and gritted his teeth together to prevent any more words from escaping his control.

“Friends,” Toph finished for him. “You didn’t let yourself hope that we could be your friends.” She put her small hand on his arm. 

He swallowed hard and looked away. He couldn’t meet her eyes, even though his heart was probably showing her more than enough right now.

“I didn’t have any friends either until I met Aang,” Toph said softly. “My parents kept me hidden, nobody even knew they had a daughter. They were embarrassed of me because I’m blind.” 

“Well that was stupid of them!” he snapped, falling back into familiar and comfortable anger. Then he took a breath, held it, and let it out slowly. “You’re amazing, and your parents should never have been ashamed of you.” 

“Thanks Zuko, I know I’m amazing. I’m the greatest earthbender in the world, and I even invented metalbending! I know who I am, even if my parents don’t and even if they never do. And nothing they do can change me,” she said fiercely.

“Like I said, you’re amazing,” Zuko told her again. He couldn’t imagine being that confident in himself, or being so independent of parental approval as a twelve year old. “So you really can bend metal?” 

“Yep. Just before our big battle in that underground place in Ba Sing Se, I got caught and had to bust my way out of a metal box. You know, the earth breaker boxes, the type used to trap earthbenders? Those dunderheads were laughing at me, saying ‘even you can’t bend metal.’ Well I showed them! See, metal is just refined earth. So I felt through metal to find where there were still bits of the original earth in the metal, and I used that to bend around the metal parts.” Toph explained. 

“How did you get caught?” Zuko asked. “Who could catch you?”

Toph went quiet at his side. Her shoulders drooped as her self-confidence faded. “I’ll only tell you if you promise not to feel sorry for me. Because it was really stupid and I should have known better.”

“I promise.”

“I’ll know if you’re lying,” she reminded him.

“Then I won’t lie,” he assured her. “You can tell me If you want. I’ll listen.”

When Toph spoke again, it was with none of her normal confidence. “After we broke into the Earth King’s Palace and convinced him that Long Feng and the Dai Li were controlling him, and told him that there was a war with the Fire Nation going on, he found letters and notes about us in Long Feng’s office. One was for Aang, he had to meet someone at one of the Air Temples about some Avatar stuff. There was a map to where Sokka and Katara’s dad’s fleet were, and . . .” she stopped and sniffed. Then she elbowed him lightly. “You promised not to feel sorry for me, remember?” 

“I remember. I promise. I won’t feel sorry for you.” 

Toph sighed, and blew her bangs out of her face. “There was a letter to me. It said it was from my mom, and that she was in the city, and she wanted to see me again. I just had to go to a place to meet her.” She stopped, and bit down on her lip until she could speak again without her voice breaking. 

“I knew it was a trap,” she said softly. “I didn’t know, but I knew it was. My mom has never, ever wanted to have anything to do with me that wasn’t dressing me up like a little fragile doll and then hiding me away. When my parents finally saw the real me, my dad told me that they had given me too much freedom, and I would be put under guard day and night to keep me safe. My mom said they were doing it for my own good. I had to run away to join Aang and Katara and Sokka! I mean, you’d think my parents would be proud that the Avatar asked me to teach him earthbending!” 

“Well, I’m pretty sure my father isn’t proud of me for teaching the Avatar firebending,” Zuko said with a sarcastic smile. 

“That’s because he’s a loser. I can’t wait for Aang to kick his ass, and I hope he realizes what a total loser lord he is just before he dies,” she said with her usual confidence. “He lost you, and that was stupid of him, because you’re a great firebender.” 

Zuko didn’t reply. His throat was too tight for words and his chest was too tight for air, but he would be damned if he broke down crying in front of a twelve year old girl. 

“Anyway, back to my own loser parents,” Toph said, and patted his arm. “I went to the place the letter said, and got caught. I should have known better, I should have known it was a trap. I think I did know, I just wanted it to be real so badly that I let myself believe it was real. But it wasn’t. My dad paid a bounty hunter to trap me, and I got caught and put in an earth breaker box. I had to figure out how to bend the metal to escape.” 

“I had to redirect lightning,” Zuko said.

“What?” 

“When I confronted my father during the eclipse. I finally told him that he was wrong, and that what the Fire Nation was doing was wrong. I told him I was leaving to teach the Avatar firebending. But I waited too long, and then he shot lightning at me.”

“He shot lightning? Like Azula did to kill Aang?” Toph said, awed and scared. “He tried to kill you!”

“It wasn’t the first time.” Maybe he shouldn’t be so casual about it, but Toph didn’t react. “Uncle taught me how to redirect lightning so it wouldn’t pass through my heart and kill me. So I survived and escaped.” He shivered. It was almost sunset and the temperature was dropping. Toph was still resting against his side, under his arm, and he bent heat from the fire at his core outwards. The little earthbender snuggled even closer to him, soaking up the extra firebender body heat. 

He should probably stop now, Zuko thought. They should be getting back to the rest of the group before Katara got even more suspicious of him. But he didn’t want to move and break the fragile peace he felt, watching the sunset with Toph at his side. He hadn’t paid much attention to her before trying to join their group, so her friendship was an unexpected gift, untainted by past hostility. She might be the only person in the group who could understand his actions in the crystal catacombs of Ba Sing Se, or at least listen to him without judgement. Maybe it was just a weakness on his part but he needed someone to not hate him, even if he didn’t deserve it. 

“I knew it was a trap,” he said softly. “When Azula had us all cornered in that crystal room. I knew - she had lied to me before. She had told me earlier that I could finally go home, that my father wanted me back and I wasn’t banished anymore. It was a lie then and uncle and I barely escaped. Then she shot him again in the abandoned town. When we were children she lied about everything. Azula always lies.” _Except when she doesn’t,_ he thought. Which was just enough to keep him off balance. 

“Even I couldn’t tell when she was lying,” Toph said. “She’s that good. And you suck at lying even for normal people. That must have been hard growing up with her.”

_You have no idea,_ he thought, but didn’t say it. 

“I just wanted to go home.” He whispered the words, as if saying them quietly would make them hurt less. “I knew it was wrong but I just wanted to go home. After two and a half years on a broken down ship chasing a ghost nobody else believed existed, then a fugitive in the Earth Kingdom, and then a refugee in Ba Sing Se, I just wanted to go home. I wanted to believe that after everything I had been through, I had finally earned my honor back, and that my father would want me again. Which is even stupider than believing Azula was telling the truth. I know it now and I knew it then, and I was so stupid.”

“It’s not stupid to want your family to care about you,” Toph said. “Even though your family is like, literally the worst family in the entire world except for your uncle, and your father’s tried to kill you. I’ve met Sokka and Katara’s dad, and I wish my father loved me like that. You’re not stupid for wanting to go home or have a father who loves you.”

Zuko put a hand over his mouth to keep from crying. He was not going to cry in front of Toph, he had promised her he wouldn’t feel sorry for himself. But no one had ever said that to him before. Even with everything Iroh had done for him, his uncle had had his own agenda to try and pull Zuko away from his father’s influence and appreciate life away from his homeland. Toph was the only person to tell him he wasn’t wrong to want to go home or to want his father’s love, and also understand why he couldn’t have either. He braced himself for another punch, but instead she sat in his lap and hugged him. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I promised you I wouldn’t feel sorry for myself.”

“There’s a difference between being sad and feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Really?”

“Yes really. Aang taught me that. Now hug me back.”

He did. He hugged her back just as tightly as she hugged him. She was just as fierce and powerful as his own sister, but without their father’s cruelty. And she showed him more understanding than anybody else ever had. He closed his eyes and buried his face in her messy black hair and held onto her like he could protect her from any danger, even though she didn’t need it. Like he could finally have a powerful little sister who cared about him and wouldn’t enjoy watching him get burned and banished. 

\----------------

That’s how Aang found them when he swooped in on his glider. The airbender did a double take at the sight of Toph sitting in Zuko’s lap and resting her head on his shoulders, his arms wrapped loosely around her back. Zuko himself looked calmer than Aang had ever seen him, his eyes closed, resting his chin in her hair and smiling. He looked like a normal person, which was still felt a little weird. 

Toph’s feet were on the ground so he hovered silently in the air to think about this. If there was _anything_ Zuko was doing with Toph that he shouldn’t . . . 

But when he looked at them closely, that’s not what he saw. In fact they reminded him more of Sokka and Katara when one of the Water Tribe siblings needed a hug than anything that would cause him to chuck Zuko off a cliff and finish learning firebending on his own. 

_Zuko and Toph. They look like best friends. Like brother and sister,_ he thought. Zuko’s sister had killed him in Ba Sing Se, and he would still be dead if it wasn’t for Katara. But he had never thought about what it must have been like for Zuko to grow up with such an evil sister, or that he might want to have a sister who wasn’t as terrifying and cruel as Azula. They looked so peaceful he didn’t want to bother them, but Katara had already made dinner and was getting angry wondering what Zuko was up to. He landed on the ground and cleared his throat. 

“Hey guys, it’s time for dinner,” he said.

“Wha-? Hey there Twinkletoes. What took so long? Calm down Sparky, you’re fine.” Toph stretched and cracked her neck, and got off his lap. 

“I wasn’t - we were just -- ” Zuko sputtered and scrambled to his feet, looking frantic.

“Talking. Sparky and I were talking, it got cold, and he has this neat firebender trick of turning into a furnace, nice and warm,” Toph said, and brushed off her clothes. “You should learn it in case Katara ever gets cold and needs a cuddle.” 

Now Aang felt just as flustered as Zuko, and couldn’t look him in the eye either. _Thanks Toph for making this even more awkward, _Aang thought. Although maybe one awkward plus another awkward balanced each other out like some of the math tricks he had learned at the Fire Nation school. “Um, yeah, I’ll learn that later. Katara has some diner ready and she said she’ll let Sokka finish it all if you guys don’t show up soon.”__

__“No way am I letting Sokka eat my food. Come on Sparky, let’s go.” Toph marched off towards the shared camping space._ _

__Aang and Zuko looked at each other. “I really wasn’t - we were just talking, I swear,” Zuko said._ _

__“I know. If you had tried anything Toph would have left you at the bottom of the cliff under an avalanche,” Aang assured him. “But I’m glad you two are friends.”_ _

__Zuko nodded and looked away with a soft smile, still too shy about being happy to smile directly at Aang. Someday, he hoped, Zuko would be able to smile directly at him when he was happy. But right now they needed to get back to the main camp, and Aang couldn’t help poking at Zuo with one last bit of mischief._ _

__“We better get there before Sokka eats everything, right Sparky?”_ _

__“You’re right. Let’s go, Twinkletoes.”_ _

__Aang narrowed his eyes. He would get Zuko back tomorrow for that. But right now it was worth it to see the glint of humor in his friend’s eyes. His talk with Toph must have been a good one, because he looked more settled and confident that he had earlier. Fire and Earth in balance was a good thing, he decided, and he would support them._ _

__“After you, Sifu Hotman.”_ _


End file.
